


to tire in repetition

by 28ghosts



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Timelines, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 18:16:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16877835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/28ghosts/pseuds/28ghosts
Summary: Experiencing fourteen million futures, most of them hopeless, takes a toll. Stephen Strange and Wong prepare for a ritual that will suppress Strange's memories of other timelines, and of course, Tony Stark finds a way to involve himself.





	to tire in repetition

**Author's Note:**

> for the Ironstrange Reverse Big Bang! check out the art prompt by teabuses [here](https://teabuses.tumblr.com/post/180850736994/heres-my-piece-for-the-ironstrange-reverse-bang) \- I hope I did it justice :)

At least the aftermath is familiar.

It's not so different than the wretched weeks after finally turning away Dormammu. Some nights, he can't sleep without remembering, in nightmares, dying again and again and again. The fourteen million worlds he saw end were more creative than Dormammu. Sometimes it was the snap that got him, and sometimes it was Obsidian Maw; sometimes he died in childhood, drowning in his sister's place.

When Strange can't sleep, he does his best to meditate. Meditation is the best way to bracket in the memories of other timelines, until he gives in and consents to Wong binding them away. His memory of those fourteen million lost timelines will lie waiting alongside his memories of dying in front of Dormammu, time and time and time again.

(They'll still be there if needed. A deep trance and Strange will be able to relive it all - the last stands, the desperate attacks, the blood and the dust and the misery of it all. Emerging from the spell to the plain misery of just one dying timeline had almost been a relief.)

Wong is ever-present during the stretches of day and night when not even meditation comes easily. He can always tell, though it must not be hard to tell; Strange knows he snaps more, keeps to himself, when not even walking meditation will bring him clarity.

Sometimes stillness is all he can manage. It would be impossible to project his consciousness, which he misses. No thumbing through books while his body rests. He misses it, the way - before Thanos arrived, he could focus so dearly on learning everything there was to know about the mystic arts.

When Strange wasn't busy warding off threats to the entire dimension, it had almost been like medical school. The same manic intensity of study, knowing any little detail could mean not just the difference between life and death for a patient but perhaps now the whole preservation of material reality as Earth beheld it.

Guarding reality isn't over now, after Thanos. Surviving should be vindication. He had done it, wielded the Eye and lived through repetition after repetition of reality _again_. Perhaps he should feel renewed in purpose. Other realms grant his requests with hurried awe; energy from other dimensions flows more easily. His name is known. Strange, Earth's Sorceror Supreme who helped kill Thanos. Stark probably deserves more credit, but the Old Gods of other dimensions don't need to know that.

(There are other, more earthly ramifications as well. Other practitioners of the mystic arts flinch when Strange snaps at them; students avoid meeting his eyes, even when he's trying to be personable. Wong laughs at him when they're alone and Strange grouses about the hero worship, the nervousness.

The Sanctum doesn't have Stark-level technologies, but they do have computers. For archives and staying in touch with other Sanctums, mostly, though anything sensitive is discussed in person. Which is for the best. Every other day, it feels like, Wong ferrets out some new piece of spying software. Stark swears up and down it isn't him, then offers to set them up with a, quote, truly killer firewall, artificial intelligence optional, end quote. Wong always looks tempted.)

Everything is different, after. The Sanctum is still secret, but...less secret than it had been. New students to be tested and perhaps taught, new threats surely gathering their strengths.

Strange and Wong spend hours poring over what Strange remembers from other realities. There are defenses that had been overrun, in one or many timelines, that can now be shored up in advance of threats that may or may not one day come.

Sometimes Strange suggests something, and Wong cuts him off - they've already faced that threat in this reality. It makes Strange feel unstuck in time, but it seems to _concern_ Wong.

Wong being concerned about him is unsettling. He'd prefer it if the man made fun of him for being unable to feel through the subtle edges of this timeline, to pull it away from all the other millions of might-have-beens, delicate and thin as thread.

There's just so _much_ in his head now. It's like the days after Dormammu, yes, but it's worse.

Dormammu hadn't shown up in all of the futures Strange had iterated through. Sometimes Kaecilius died before coming to Kamar-Taj; sometimes the Ancient One persuaded him to stay on the side of good, for all the good it did.

Sometimes Thanos made it to Earth before Dormammu did.

Strange can't remember much of it, not at once. His memories of other timelines come suddenly and unbidden. It's like remembering a dream in the middle of the day, a recollection triggered by something mundane. One morning he's in the library and he catches the smell of rain and remembers he was a musician not but once but many times, and he wonders if he picked up a guitar, if now his fingers would know how to move on its neck, even if they couldn't, scarred and shaking as they are.

Sometimes he forgets it's this timeline where he memorized so many things about old records. This isn't the only one where he carried crates of vinyl away from independent record shops shuttering themselves as the market changed, thinking mostly, idly, of what he'd a good deal he'd gotten.

Before Thanos, Strange had gotten a handhold in his self-loathing. It had seemed a distant thing, like everything else associated with his old life: fast cars, expensive wine, hating himself. But like everything else imaginable, it's been complicated by what it took to defeat Thanos. Fourteen million futures had made it new again.

It's one thing to loathe yourself, or who you used to be, and another entirely to loathe so many versions of yourself. And another yet to wish bitterly that you might have been one of the versions of yourself that you wouldn't have hated so much: one that ended up a mid-tier surgeon with a wife and children (before Thanos came.) One that chased fame and prestige but somehow stayed affable and kind (before Thanos came.) One that saved your sister (before Thanos came.)

None of those versions of Stephen Strange lived in timelines where Thanos was defeated, though. Only here, in this one, now, dizzily braced against a bookshelf, has the world survived.

Usually Strange can keep himself from remembering too much at once. But sometimes the trigger for it is too much: a name in a book that reminds him of a slate of timelines where Earth had been mostly destroyed before Thanos arrived in a war against an invading trans-dimensional entity. When something reminds Strange of those sorts of timelines, it's like he tries to remember too much at once. What they'd tried, what had failed, what had nearly worked. All that, he and Wong can use.

"It's getting worse," Wong says. His voice is quiet, soft, but they're alone in the library, and it seems to carry more than it should.

The Cloak helps Strange to his feet. He makes it to one of the damned uncomfortable chairs that's probably as old as the rest of the Sanctum itself, and he collapses.

"Yes," Strange says. He tilts his head back and tries to think of nothing, but all those details churn in his head: spells he learned in another world, that he's had no cause to learn in this one, that, by the Vishanti, he has no cause to learn in this one; that he learns from remembering anyhow. "It is."

Things were easier inside the torpor of the Soul Stone. It had been quiet there, and Strange's thoughts had come to him more slowly.

"Whenever you're ready," Wong says.

Strange knows what Wong means: whenever he's ready, whenever it becomes unbearable, they'll bind these memories away.

Just a little while longer. Strange will remember more, enough to defend reality from threats that came to bear in other worlds, other timelines, and then -- then they'll repeat the ritual. The memories of other timelines will sink deep into his memory. And maybe then it will be easier, living in this, the one winning timeline, with its bevy of new horrors and violences.

He understands Stark and Ultron. It’s a horrifying thought, but there were timelines where Strange was there when Stark made the choice, as haunted by visions of Thanos then as Strange is now. There had been plenty of timelines where Stark was his friend.

Strange tells himself that this isn’t one of them, but he's lying to himself.

* * *

Strange pretends to not like Stark.

Which doesn't stop Stark, who treats the Sanctum like something in between a tourist destination and a coffee shop. It doesn't help that Wong usually makes him tea. (Stark likes honey and lemon, but he'll drink without it, too.) Stark will mosey in, and the awestruck apprentice at the entrance who's supposed to give visitors a tough time will wave him in, and then Stark will find Strange and Wong in the library and say things like, "I was in the neighborhood!", which is absurd on its face. The man can fly; anywhere on the East Coast could conceivably be Tony Stark's neighborhood.

And then he'll say something like, "Anyone up for take-out?" or "You know, Peter's school is looking for places to take field trips; I bet they'd love this place," or "You know, if no one here cleans I'm completely willing to hire someone to do it for you. Ooh! Or build you a robot. Wong, do you want a robot maid?"

The answers to Tony Stark's myriad questions and offers are almost always "No."

Today, though, it's, “Aw, don’t look at me like that, Doc. I brought you tea.”

"Doc" is only one of Stark's many preferred nicknames for Stephen Strange. It's probably the least obnoxious.

Stark has joined them in one of musty library rooms where ever since Thanos’s snap was reversed, Wong and Strange have been doing what might generously be termed research. Mostly it’s them going through books together until something alarming jogs Strange’s memory, and they earmark it for further research.

This is the one future they won. They wrenched it out of fate’s hands. Strange wants it protected.

Through the gaps between books, Strange can see Stark on the other side of the shelves, sitting at a table with Wong. “I just watched Wong pour that out for you,” Strange says.

Stark looks at him through the books. “Yeah, well, you can have it you want.”

“You’re going to hurt Wong’s feelings,” Strange deadpans.

Stark gasps in mock horror, pressing his hand to where the triangular light at the center of his suit would be were he wearing it. “I would never. Wong, do you have feelings?”

And because since the day Stephen Strange arrived at Kamar-Taj, Wong has loved nothing more than messing with Strange, Wong says, “No.”

Wong’s back is turned to Strange, but Strange rolls his eyes anyways.

“There you go. You heard the man.” Stark raises his cup to Strange. Strange shoves a few books together so he can’t see Stark’s face anymore, but Stark raises his voice hopefully. “Tea?”

“No, thank you. You know, we really have things to be doing here, Stark.”

“I can make myself useful. Just tell me what to do.”

“Can you read Aramaic?”

“No, but my AI can.”

“Is that what you say every time someone asks you to do something you don’t want to do? ‘Dr. Stark, could you be quiet for a moment?’ ‘No, but my AI can.’”

At which only Stark laughs. Wong might snort. Since Stark can’t see his face, Strange lets himself smile just for a moment. It feels strange.

It reminds him of something, something else -- Strange bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood. When the feeling passes, he sees his hand, white-knuckled braced against one of the shelves.

He should really have Stark leave. It would be easy. If he told Wong that Stark makes the remembering worse…

Strange could; he doesn’t.

* * *

A week later, Stark is making a nuisance of himself in the library when Strange cracks open a book and promptly passes out. He comes back to in one of the library chairs with Wong and Stark both hovering over him, arguing in whispers. The Cloak taps Stark’s shin.

After Strange feels strong enough to sit up, Stark makes him explain.

“It’s...too much information. Physically,” Strange says. “I can keep it contained, mostly.” Through meditation, which is getting harder and harder as carrying the memories wears at him. “When something triggers a memory…” He gestures. His hands ache.

“Right. It gets too much, bang, one wizard on the ground.”

“...more or less.”

Stark leans back in the other chair. “Like a compressed file uncompressing itself on system storage when there’s not enough space for it.”

Well, it’s not the first time someone’s compared Strange to a computer. And when Christina had, well - she’d been less kind about it.

“It’s a wizard blue screen of death. ‘Your magician ran into a problem and needs to restart.’”

Strange fights the urge to groan in exasperation. Stark would only take it as encouragement. “Right. Thank you, Tony, I think that’s enough.”

“Of me? Never.”

After Stark leaves, Strange needs the Cloak to steady his hand to drink without cracking the glass into his teeth.

* * *

Stark shows up nearly every day after that, asking questions about the seizures. Wong answers more than Strange does.

Strange understands Tony Stark in aggregate. Across timelines, the man makes sense to him: always dogged and intense, throwing himself into the fray alongside whatever combination of superpowered humans has emerged in a given timeline.

Strange passes out here and there. Stark’s always there when he wakes up.

* * *

Stark brings him tea after a particularly bad one.

Stark holds out the tea with one hand. His knuckles are bandaged, and the back of one palm. "You good to go with this, Dumbledore?"

Strange stares at him.

"With your hands and all." Stark wriggles the fingers of his free hand in the air, but there's nothing mocking about it. "Don't tell me you don't know who Dumbledore is."

"I'm...good," Strange says. He lets Stark settle the cup between his outstretched hands, brings it up to his mouth, drinks too quickly. The middle of his tongue will burn. “I know who Dumbledore is.”

"How many futures did you dig your hands into?" Stark asks him. "Don't answer that. Too many, I know. You got us here, though. You got us to the good one.

"If I had to guess, I'd say you don't know why I don't ask. It kills me sometimes, Doc. I wanna know. What it was like, in the other timelines, in the other worlds--" Stark cuts himself off and pushes his tinted glasses up his nose. When he speaks again, it's with more control. "I don't ask, though."

“It wasn’t...quite like that,” Strange says.

“Yeah, I figured. Look. That’s not the point. The point is, we’re here -- we won. Wong tells me you’re putting off this ritual that should help. Why?”

Because there’s always more to learn. Always, every time he manages to sleep and he dreams--

“We won. You’re done. Let it go. You’re making me sound like a motivational speaker. Do the damn ritual.”

“Did Wong say you could watch if you talked me into it?”

“Damn right.”

“Fine.”

* * *

A week later, Wong throws open an entrance to the mirror dimension, and in they go. Light dances on the mirrored surface of Stark’s sunglasses. Stark is expressionless as the nanosuit ripples across most of his body.

“You shouldn’t need that,” Strange says. He reaches out for his magic as he lowers himself to the ground. He can see his reflection in the burnt-gold surface of the Iron Man armor.

“Sure. So the reason we’re doing this inside the movie Inception is because it looks cool?”

Wong snorts.

Strange reaches for his magic. It’s odd to think it was once so difficult for him, and that each flurry of gold sparks in the air had seemed once like a miracle. “I don’t know what Inception is.”

“It’s a movie,” Wong says.

“Thank you, I’d gathered that much.”

Wong shrugs expansively as he thumbs through the leather-bound book of rituals. “It’s okay.”

“Overrated,” Stark agrees.

Strange sits in mid-air, hands resting lightly on his knees. In the mirror dimension, away from the ambient magics of the rest of the Sanctum, the Eye pulls at him more sharply. Strange closes his eyes and focuses on that pull, the resonance of it. “We’re here to get away from other magic,” Strange says. “For a spell this complex--”

“Yeah, yeah. Isolate the special magic rock’s special magic energy.”

Stark sounds as flippant and dismissive as ever, as if he doesn’t know just as well as Strange how dangerous the Eye can be.

“You don’t have to be here, you know. There’s still plenty of time to leave.”

“Nah. Figure this is as close as I’ll ever get to seeing a real-life exorcism; no way I’m missing out on that.”

“Quiet now,” Wong says.

Wong and Stark must genuinely get along because Stark doesn’t have a snappy comeback at that.

Strange lifts one hand to cup the stone; its magic jolts through him like adrenaline, and his head feels like it splits in two as fourteen million lives lived and battles lost expands inside him, too big, too much, too many details, too many might-have-beens. It’s too much -- too much information, too much _pain_ \--

* * *

Strange wakes up in bed. “How long have I…”

“Easy there, Sleeping Beauty,” Stark says. Of course it’s Stark. Stark leans in as Strange’s vision goes black at the edges, but the Cloak wraps around Strange’s shoulders and helps him. Stark just barely rests his fingers on Strange’s shoulder as Strange settles against the headboard. Once the Cloak goes slack, Stark withdraws his touch. “Just a couple hours.”

Strange manages to raise his right hand. It shakes. He watches for a moment. It might be better than it was, before the binding ritual. Or perhaps not. It gets worse when he tries to still it, just like always.

* * *

“I’m surprised you never asked,” Strange mentions, after what might be hours.

“First time I dropped by, I meant to. Wong told me not to or he’d portal me back to the tower himself.”

Strange suppresses a smile. “I didn’t know that.”

“He didn’t say why, but I’m guessing…”

“Wizard blue screen of death,” Strange deadpans.

“Right.” Stark clears his throat. “Is it...can I ask now?”

“You know I don’t remember it all.”

“Yeah, thought that was the point.”

“And there’s...things I won’t tell you. Even from what I do remember.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I can ask?”

Strange nods.

“It’s about Titan. I don’t remember it all that well,” Stark says. He sounds a little bitter but mostly tired. “I mean, I know what happened -- the suit captures video.”

“Oh.”

“Not for, like, weird reasons.” Stark wrinkles his nose and thumbs at the grey in his beard. He doesn’t look his age, not really. “I wanted it to be part of the Accords. An agreement that anyone going all superhero would document it, just in case something went wrong.”

“Sensible.”

“You’d think.” More bitterness than exhaustion now.

Strange closes his eyes. He’s tired, but in the sort of way where sleep will be long-coming. Stark is quiet for awhile. “You haven’t asked anything,” Strange says, after awhile.

“Wasn’t sure if you were sleeping or not.”

That’s...considerate. Enough that Strange makes the effort to open his eyes just enough to glare.

“You called me Tony. After the whole...fourteen million futures thing.”

“Also not a question.”

“Why?”

“...that’s what you want to know about?”

“Yeah. What, is that so surprising?”

“Not if Ultron ever worked, or if the Accords--”

Stark cuts him off. “Doesn’t matter. Ultron, the Accords -- they were all always about protecting the Earth. If we got to the point where we had to fight Thanos, then they didn’t work.” It’s more clinical, more stoic an answer than Strange had expected. “Though I guess it didn’t go quite so damn wrong all the time if you saw it in some of those fourteen million…”

Strange lifts one hand to make a so-so gesture, and Stark snorts at him. “That’s even worse than your usual koan bullshit.”

“Can’t remember,” Strange says.

“We were friends sometimes, weren’t we. In the other timelines.”

Strange realizes with belated, ineffectual horror that this must be why Stark has been showing up again and again, bringing coffee and takeout and nagging Wong. It would be touching if Strange knew how to handle it, but he’s never been good at people, not the way Stark is.

“Yes,” Strange says. Stark was about to say something but cuts himself off, looking a bit surprised. “We were.”

“Didn’t expect you to admit it that easily.”

“Why?”

Stark’s voice is flat with disbelief. “You could barely look at me when I first started showing up here.”

“Friends, yes. Often.” The Cloak presses itself more firm around Strange’s shoulders - warning, encouragement, it’s hard to say. “Allies, comrades in arms, and rivals here and there. Strangers, sometimes, who never met until we were both in the Soul Stone, or not even then. Lovers.”

“Huh.” Stark sounds mildly surprised, but not shocked; something in Strange settles at it. Perhaps a curl of disappointment. “Hey, Stephen. I can call you that, right? We did get married in another timeline, after all.”

“I didn’t say we got married.”

“Did we?”

Strange sighs. “Sometimes.”

“God, I hope we didn’t hyphenate. Stark-Strange. Strange-Stark.”

Strange doesn’t dignify that with a response.

“I should let you sleep,” Stark says.

“Won’t. Not any time soon.”

“You sure? You look very convincingly tired.”

“Not that kind of tired.” Strange rolls his head. “You don’t have to stay.”

“I could.”

“I...could use the company.”

“That settles it, then.”

* * *

A month later, ostensibly visiting for lunch, Stark shoves him against a bookshelf to stick his tongue in Strange’s mouth, then cracks up when a book falls on his head. “I deserve that,” he says, rubbing at the side of his skull.

“Probably,” Strange says, because it’s the easier thing to think about. He rests one hand at Stark’s jaw and squints down his nose at Stark’s eyes. “It probably wasn’t hard enough to concuss you, but you should be careful anyways. Do you feel nauseated or short of breath?”

“Shut up, jackass,” Stark says, and kisses him again.

“Head trauma is no laughing matter.”

“If you don’t drop it, I’m gonna start asking you whether we hyphenated our names or not in those other timelines.”

Strange does his best to look serious. “Who says we hyphenated? Tony Strange has such a nice ring to it--”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Hmm. I don’t remember.”

“You’re insufferable,” Stark says.

Strange winks; Stark yanks him in by the Cloak, and the Cloak isn’t even offended.

* * *

(It doesn’t matter if they hyphenate in other timelines. In this one, if Stephen needs Tony, Tony is there; if Tony needs Stephen, Stephen is there.

That’s all that matters.)


End file.
